The Screaming Woman

Olivia de Havilland as a mental patient trying to prove someone’s buried alive on her estate. George: Joseph Cotten. Nesbitt: Ed Nelson. Howard: Charles Knox Robinson. Dr. Larkin: Walter Pidgeon. Caroline: Laraine Stephens. Bronson: Charles Drake. Harry: Russell G. Wiggins. Directed by Jack Smight., Olivia De Havilland plays a middle-aged woman who has recently been released from a mental institution after suffering a breakdown. She insists one evening that she can hear the muffled scream of a woman emanating from beneath the ground. Since no one else can hear these screams, De Havilland is dismissed as a crank. But Ms. De Havilland is steadfast in her conviction that the screams are real, and to that end investigates on her own. She discovers–at the peril of her own life–that the screams are those of a woman buried alive at a construction site by her recluse husband. Losing credibility long before the denouement, The Screaming Woman is based on a vastly superior short story by Ray Bradbury, in which the protagonist is not an adult ex-mental patient but a precocious little girl with a reputation for lying.